NAIROBI, Kenya – Russia formally notified the United Nations on Thursday of its acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, starting a three-month countdown for the long-debated 1997 pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions to come into force.
President Vladimir Putin signed the protocol into law earlier this month, allowing it to take effect in 128 nations that ratified it, said U.N. environmental agency spokesman Eric Falt. The United States has refused to join.
Thursday, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, turned over the accession documents to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Nairobi. The protocol commits 55 industrialized nations to make significant cuts in emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide by 2012.
Developing nations including Brazil, China, India and Indonesia also are parties to the protocol but do not have emission-reduction targets.
The United States and Australia rejected the pact, which could not have come into effect without Russia, which accounted for 17 percent of carbon dioxide emission in 1990. The United States accounted for 36 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 1990.
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